Property Week quotes Cara Imbrailo on John Lewis click-and-collect dispute
min readThe current and former landlords of north-west London shopping centre Brent Cross are suing retailer John Lewis for a cut of click-and-collect sales, in a case which could have significant implications for the retail property industry.
Current landlord Hammerson and former landlord Standard Life Investments have sought out a declaration from the High Court that click-and-collect sales should be included in the store's turnover rent calculation. This could have a significant impact on the rent John Lewis would have to pay, since the retailer's lease was agreed decades before the introduction of online shopping.
John Lewis has stated that its online sales should be exempt, because click-and-collect orders only see an in-store transaction with the customer completed once the product has been dispatched from a distribution centre to a store. The landlords however claim that gross receipts paid on top of the annual base rent should include online sales collected in store and online orders fulfilled from the store. They are seeking the payment of backdated rents on this basis.
Cara Imbrailo, Partner in our Real Estate team, comments in Property Week:
If a customer browses the shop floor on Saturday, goes home, orders online on Sunday and collects on Tuesday, who really ‘made’ that sale? Landlords would argue that the store drove the sale.
With physical stores increasingly acting as a showroom for a retailer, the impact they have on driving on-line sales means that this isn’t a straightforward question. From a tenant’s perspective – and particularly when fulfilment happens at a distribution centre and the store is simply a convenient collection point – adding these sales into a turnover rent calculation can feel like being charged twice and the financial impact on the tenant can be significant.
Read the full article in Property Week here.
Related coverage:
